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On Monday 27 August, Chinese audiences attended movie theaters in huge numbers for the come back of Spider Man and Batman, but the first one was the winner.

For its opening, Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man generated an estimated $5.46 million at approximately 2,515 locations. The Dark Knight Rises which also opened the same day in China has already set a record for Warner Bros. On it’s first day the film opened to $4.45 million, the highest 2D opener for WB in China.

These non official figures were first released by Sony’s Michael Yang who reported on Weibo that his company’s Spider-man beat the Batman movie at the box office with RMB33.7 million (US$5.3 million) against RMB28.0 million (US$4.4 million) on opening day. Some hours later, the US offices of the Sony Pictures and Warner Bros studios reported slightly higher numbers of US$5.46 million and US$4.45 million respectively for the two films.

Spider-man is exclusively screening in 3-D in China, with ticket prices 50% higher than Dark Knight at many cinemas, therefore Dark Knight may have had the higher number of admissions.

After 3 weeks of foreign films ban on Chinese screens, the two films are dominating Mainland cinemas, representing 80% of nationwide screenings on Monday.

Warner Bros is believed to have submitted a heavily edited version that was specifically prepared for China. Most notably, scenes showing the public’s occupation of Gotham City have been shortened. No cut has been made on The Dark Knight Rises for China.

Despite opening in direct competition, the lucrative Chinese box office should provide a healthy boost to both films; as it stands at the moment, The Dark Knight Rises looks all but certain to break the $1 billion mark globally and overtake The Dark Knight to become the biggest Batman film of all-time, although The Amazing Spider-Man remains some $80 million adrift of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and looks set to end up as the lowest-grossing instalment of the Spider-Man franchise.

No import films are expected to open in China from 15 Sep for at least a month to make way for domestic films during the country’s National Day holidays. After failing to secure co-production status, The Expendables 2 has moved up its release date to 4 Sep. The 3-D Prometheus opens two days earlier on 2 Sep.

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